A century or two ago, we built our church and marked the common out.
We raised the town hall next, so we could have our say about the taxes, or whether we need
another teacher for the school.
When town meeting comes around, we know our rights and duties, and no harm if we disagree
in all that matters we neighbors hold together.
We work from sun to dark, if you can call just work a job that helps make a body feel
at peace while doing it, or hum a bit with pleasure when it's done.
That isn't something foreign we look at in a showcase.
It's in the blankets that we've spun and woven right at home.
It's in the patchwork quilts sewn by our daughters at a quilting bee for someone's bridal chest.
It's in the locks and hinges that the blacksmith shapes.
It's in the baskets that are woven in the neighborhood to fit our household needs from
marketing to mending.
When water wheels are better fitted to do the work than human hands, we rig up the machines
to saw the wood or grind the corn for harmony grits and Johnny cake.
A while ago that corn was on the stalk, above the pumpkins, ripe and yellow.
One night the neighbors met to shell the ears together.
They did the job in no time so they could clear the old barn floor and choose their
favorite partners for the dances.
There was lasting harmony between the soil and what we built or planted there.
We used our hands and mastered what we laid our hands on.
Working and living we found a balance.
The town was us and we were part of it.
We never let our cities grow too big for us to manage.
We never pushed the open land too far away.
We youngsters took it in.
The haying field, the mill, the daily chores were teachers.
We old ones had good years of family life.
Our own, our children's.
Yellow years before the ripe fruit fell as fruit will drop on windless autumn days.
And that was peace.
The seed was ready for the earth again, ready to die, ready once more to grow.
Jeans, inventions, power, black out the past.
Forget the quiet cities.
Bring in the steam and steel, the iron men, the giants.
Open the throttle all aboard the promised land.
Pillars of smoke by day, pillars of fire by night, pillars of progress.
Machines to make machines, production to expand production.
There's wood and wheat and kitchen sinks and calico already made in tons and carload lots.
Enough for tens, thousands, millions, millions.
Better and faster, better and better.
It don't make us any happier to know there's millions like us living here on top of it.
There's prisons where a guy sent up for crime can get a better place to live in than we
can give our children.
Smoke makes prosperity, they tell you here.
Smoke makes prosperity, no matter if you choke on it.
We got to face life in these shacks and alleys.
We got to let our children take their chances here with rickets, typhoid, TB or worse.
They draw a blank, the kids.
They have no business here.
This no man's land, this slag heap wasn't meant for them.
There's poison in the air.
There's debris.
There's poison in the river.
The fog and smoke blow right up and choke us.
Don't tell us that this is the best that you can do in building cities.
Who built this place?
What put us here?
And how do we get out again?
We're asking, just asking.
We might as well stay in the mills and call that home.
They're just as fit to live in.
We mine the coal, load the furnace, roll the steel, drive the rivets.
We lock the bolt on the assembly line.
We're lucky if we have the chance to keep the job from day to day, from month to month.
The dirty work alone don't get us down.
We're not ashamed to handle coal and iron all the way from mine shafts to skyscrapers.
We turn out cars, attractors we're mighty proud of, same as you.
But how does that make sense with this?
We never get the gritty feel out of our nose, our eyes, our lungs, our guts.
We never get a chance to see how blue the sky can be unless the mills are all shut down.
Smoke makes prosperity, they say.
Does this mean that there's no way out for us?
There must be something better.
Why can't we have it?
A decent home.
Follow the crowd, get the big money.
Make a pile and raise a pile, that makes another pile for you.
Follow the crowd, we've reached a million, two million, five million, watch us grow,
going up.
It's new, it's automatic, it dictates, records, seals, sterilizes, stamps, and delivers in
one operation without human hand.
What am I bid?
What am I offered?
Sold?
Who's next?
The people, yes.
Follow the crowd to the Empire City, the Wonder City, the Windy City, the Fashion City.
The people, yes.
The people, perhaps.
Very truly yours.
Most sincerely.
We beg to remain yours most respectfully.
Here, sir, please sir.
Here, sir, we humbly acknowledge your fine partnership.
Dr. Nickel is on call.
Dr. Nickel?
Dr. Nickel, in the ward.
Get Dr. Leepin on call.
Another street case.
Compound fracture of the tibia.
Can't locate Dr. Leepin.
By the eighth floor.
Compound fracture of the tibia.
Crushed leg.
I hear it's flying off.
I can hear it bumping me.
Skateboard free則.
24 hours of
Channel of the
Come on, Russian.
Come again?
Come on, Russian.
Stop with Maltese.
We're beaty down.
Western, one up.
Burn one.